[prateekm]

Has MSI officially shut shop in India? I needed to claim RMA for my GPU.

[SLK]

Originally Posted by prateekm

Has MSI officially shut shop in India? I needed to claim RMA for my GPU.

That got me worried! I have 3 MSI laptops and a couple of GPUs in warranty. See this http://hardwarebbq.com/news/hw-retai...dled-digicare/

[msdivy]

Originally Posted by NetfreakBombay

In other words, SSD would act as a cache for the HDD.

While that is a possibility, the requirement is creating RAID between SSD & HDD. This removes the flexibility of switching or changing the drives, which would then require re-install of OS. I find the solution complicated for general use and might fade away shortly, as the prices of SSD are dropping. Eg, 960GB Crucial M500 SSD costs $599 now.

[vasudeva]

Originally Posted by msdivy

Eg, 960GB Crucial M500 SSD costs $599 now.

Although it has been launched recently, is it available even in US?? In India??.
I saw a price of 360$ for 480 GB on amazon today.

Till now 512GB was perhaps the largest capacity option for SSDs especially for laptops but 960GB beats that quite substantially.

[msdivy]

Originally Posted by vasudeva

Although it has been launched recently, is it available even in US?? In India??.

$600 960GB SSD will be available from 30th May. There are ~1TB SSDs in market, but they cost around $2000.

[NetfreakBombay]

Originally Posted by msdivy

While that is a possibility, the requirement is creating RAID between SSD & HDD.

RAID setup is not required. Steps:

http://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/art...D-Caching-148/

Quoting from the link:

Setting up an SSD cache is very easy as long as the following requirements are met:

The chipset supports SSD caching (currently Z68/Z77/H77/Q77 or the mobile equivalents)
A traditional primary hard drive
A secondary SSD drive
The SATA controller must be set to RAID mode (no arrays need to be configured)
The Intel RST software must be install

[vasudeva]

Originally Posted by msdivy

$600 960GB SSD will be available from 30th May. There are ~1TB SSDs in market, but they cost around $2000.

In India then from 30th May?? On newegg, there were some (read the reviews) but it is not in stock now.

[msdivy]

Originally Posted by NetfreakBombay

http://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/art...D-Caching-148/

Thanks for the link. SSD caching is limited to maximum of 64GB of SSD space. So it is really beneficial to go for SSD caching is the SSD size is 64GB or below. This will give almost the same benefits as boot from SSD performance. Anything higher than 64GB, it is better off of installing OS on SSD.

Originally Posted by vasudeva

In India then from 30th May?? On newegg, there were some (read the reviews) but it is not in stock now.

30th May in US. Probably after some time in India.


An year back my colleague shared his SSD experience. This is quite beneficial for SSD buyers.

SSD's are just NAND flash with a special controller that allows for those high speed read/writes. It is important to purchase an SSD with high quality NAND and you should try to ensure you only write (you can read how much ever you want due to the design) no more than 20GB per day if you want the drive to last for about 6-8 years. SSD's are not the best bang for the buck when we talk about just storage, however putting one in your system will have noticeable results.

My recommendations:

• You *should* not use an SSD drive by itself. You should use it in conjunction with a normal 7200RPM/5400RPM hard drive
• You should use the SSD as a boot drive and keep only the applications you use on the hard drive
• Never load an SSD to full capacity, you need to keep atleast 2-3GB free otherwise you will experience significant performance degradation
• Try to buy drives with at least 2-3% over-provisioning
• Write at most 20GB a day for better health
• Use a diagnostics program to ensure TRIM is working properly
• NEVER defrag an SSD - Just a waste of write cycles on the NAND
• Disable search indexing, your access times are ridiculously fast
• Buy synchronous/Toggle NAND flash SSD's - do not go near asynchronous NAND flash as they cannot handle high speed manipulation of compressed data

Recommended flagship Sandforce controller hard drives

• Intel 520 120GB/240GB
• SanDisk Extreme 120/240GB
• Corsair Force GT 120/240GB
• OCZ Vertex III MAXIOPS edition 120/240GB
• Kingston HyperX (Just plain hyperx not HyperX 3K) 120/240GB

Recommended non Sandforce controller hard drives

• OCZ Vertex IV 128/256GB
• Plextor M3 64/128/256GB
• Corsair Performance Pro 128/256GB

Honorable Mentions

• Value - Mushkin Chronos Deluxe 120/240GB
• Value - Crucial M4 64/128/256GB

[NetfreakBombay]

Originally Posted by msdivy

This will give almost the same benefits as boot from SSD performance.

One advantage with caching is perforamnce of data files. Say if you dont use some OS features (E.g. files related to Media center) but access some Excel / mp3 /... quite often, cachig will keep thsoe sectors on ssd wihtout user having to think about it.

[vasudeva]

On SSDs

1. Win 7 and 8 do disable defrag by default but may not happen for some reason.
2. Most of the other points are largely valid though some relate to longevity in years, if you are so concerned.

I have compiled a list of SSD tweaks over the years from sites. Only 1-2 points:
1. Disabling Drive Indexing
[FONT=&quot]Open up Computer in the Start menu. Right click your SSD and select properties. Uncheck the box [/FONT][FONT=&quot]"Allow files on this drive to have contents indexed in addition to file properties". A pop-[/FONT][FONT=&quot]up screen may appear, stating there is an error applying attributes. This is normal. You should select "Ignore All" and continue.[/FONT]

2. One way to gain substantial free space on the SSD

The Hiberfil.sys hidden system file is located in the root folder of the drive where the operating system is installed. The Windows Kernel Power Manager reserves this file when you install Windows. The size of this file is approximately equal to how much RAM is installed on the computer. It follows, then, that disabling this feature returns as much storage capacity as you have installed RAM. A desktop armed with an SSD doesn't stand to gain much performance-wise from leaving hibernation on. Simply powering down and booting back up will happen fast enough. If you're using a notebook, powering down and back up is also preferable to letting your machine drop to standby and continue draining battery power.

How to disable:
In the Start menu search box, type "cmd" without the quote.Right-click the cmd program and select Run as Administrator.In the command line, type "powercfg -h off", again without the quotes. Once completed, the command prompt returns.

[vasudeva]

It seems Intel Haswell i7-4770K (due to be launched in the first week of June) has already been reviewed and compared. From these screenshots, it appears to be a minor tick with no worthy improvements over ivy bridge. In the comparison, i7-3770K was compared with the i7-4770K

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Intel...a-352512.shtml

[agambhandari]

Originally Posted by agambhandari

Hi guys, I am looking to build a budget HTPC shortly. This will not be my primary computer.
The only real needs are to be able to play and/or stream 1080p video, be snappy enough to handle regular tasks like Web browsing on Windows or view some books/magazines/photos on the big screen.

I only want to know the best CPU/GPU for the task right now.

I was looking at the AMD APU, because I mainly require graphics more than heavy processing. the A10 is really good, but the cost is a bit too much.
on the other hand, A4-5300 is the only cheaper alternative, but I am afraid it may lack the required CPU prowess. The GPU is great and more than adequate. A6 would have been the best options, but not in India right now.

Any experience with APU? Thanks!

P.S. -I love the branding that AMD has done. A4, A6, A8 good option for an Audi fanboy!

Guys, any !dea on this?

[NetfreakBombay]

Originally Posted by agambhandari

Hi guys, I am looking to build a budget HTPC shortly. This will not be my primary computer.
The only real needs are to be able to play and/or stream 1080p video, be snappy enough to handle regular tasks like Web browsing on Windows or view some books/magazines/photos on the big screen.

Take a look at Media players as well.

These can:

1. Play YouTube
2. Have enough processing power to handle 1080p + 7.1 sound from USB or LAN
3. Easily run most eBook apps (Kindle/ PDF/ Google books/...)
4. Great for Skype on TV
5. Have decent web browsers

Best part is cost. A decent Media player with WiFi would cost around 12k as compared to 20k+ for htpc.

[agambhandari]

Originally Posted by NetfreakBombay

Take a look at Media players as well.

These can:

1. Play YouTube
2. Have enough processing power to handle 1080p + 7.1 sound from USB or LAN
3. Easily run most eBook apps (Kindle/ PDF/ Google books/...)
4. Great for Skype on TV
5. Have decent web browsers

Best part is cost. A decent Media player with WiFi would cost around 12k as compared to 20k+ for htpc.

I have seen these, I would still have to get an HDD

and XBMC is still iffy on most Android Devices, and still nothing beats browsing on windows/Linux , it is way better than any android device.

Under 20K is certainly possible with the A4. So I need to make sure if it is up to the task.

[praful]

Folks have a weird problem. I got a new internal 1TB HDD.

-Now its recognized in BIOS.
-Once I boot into windows I don't see it.
-Neither I can see it in the Disk Management client
-I have EaseUS Partition manager, and I see it as 2TB in that, anything done in the partition manager also ends in some error or the other
-When I login to the Windows recovery console I can see it properly as a 1TB HDD
-Even when I boot into PE's like UBCD or BartPE I can see 1TB and I can format it to NTFS 1TB. But when I boot back into windows I can't see the HDD

Any ideas ?

PS: I am already running 1 HDD on IDE and another on SATA, this new one is also on SATA.